


Nothing matters when we're dancing

by drunkfranz



Series: We Have No Control [1]
Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: M/M, artsy imagery, just poor old morty being poor young morti, much metaphors, nothing really happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 15:29:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13593012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkfranz/pseuds/drunkfranz
Summary: One year, four months and thirteen days. That’s how long it had been since his knees had not been shaking every damn second he was awake. That's how long Morty had been dancing.That's how long ago everything had stopped making any sense.Or,Shaky knees, lankly legs and sweaty palms, that was the Morty combo, ready to kill (himself) on the dance floor.





	Nothing matters when we're dancing

**Author's Note:**

> So, hey. I wrote this months ago and was planning to write the rest (HAHAH) but never did, so here you have a wholeheartedly half-assed piece of my sick dead imagination re: the sick nature of Rick and Morty's relationship.  
> Enjoy.

**Nothing matters when we’re dancing**

Morty had never been good at dancing. Every time he tried to move in some sort of rhythmical fashion that could stop his mind from falling apart, his feet would tangle in on their own doubt and shame and his head would spin and spin until nothing made any sense anymore and he got thrown into the madness that was his life. With every tumbling step that he took, cosmic irony would send him not two but thirteen steps back.

It was a losing battle, he knew. There was no escaping the doom that he would sooner or later bring down upon himself.

But he kept on trying to dance, shaky knees and everything, and he wondered how long it had been since the last time they (his knees, not _them_ , Rick could never be shaken) weren’t trembling like two skinny dogs out in the cold. But then he shrugged off the question. He knew the answer all too well.

He also knew when he had started to dance at all, the first timid steps his doubtful feet made (the paths his hands started to shyly mark, the minute contact of his lips against the other’s mouth, the stolen, lightning-fast looks they exchanged, the chests rising against each other, the friction of their clothes getting in the way) and how hard he had fallen after them (the sound of someone walking outside the room, a voice calling out for Rick, Morty’s hands freezing and his eyes two scared pools of green when the door was opened), how he was so certain it was all over before it even started (Beth’s blank expression, Morty’s own mother, the _daughter_ of the man that was holding him in his lap, no less, looking at the scene and trying so hard not to see, not to _truly_ see what was so obvious, like she really wanted to believe nothing was wrong, and failing miserably and running into the kitchen for a glass or five of wine).

He also remembers perfectly well the first time he danced a whole choreography orchestrated by a man who was so much more powerful than Morty could ever hope for his own forgotten god to be.

But that’s too shady, too corny and Morty knows far too well that nothing is ever so simple or beautiful as a lame dance. He knew perfectly well that his situation with Rick was nowhere near comparable to some farfetched dance metaphor.

Situation? For fuck’s sake, he had to spell it out, stop being such a pussy in his own mind. Having sex with Rick, with his grandpa. There, he said it.

He didn’t feel like any less of a pussy, somehow.

Morty sighed, rubbing his forehead. He had to stop thinking about so many useless things every morning, or one day he wouldn’t get out of bed at all going through every single day of his life since Rick showed up, trying to figure out when it all went so wrong. Another, deeper sigh and then he took his cellphone, knowing it was somewhere under his pillow like he knew his legs were under the bedsheets. The screen spat out numbers he couldn’t make out. He rubbed his eyes and looked at it again: 4:15.

Great, he knew it was early, but not _this_ early. He shoved off his cellphone back under the pillow and turned over his side, facing the wall with the stupid posters he’d hung what seemed like an eternity ago. He could hardly believe the boy who’d cut them out from old pornographic magazines was the same Morty who was now looking at them now, completely indifferent.

Well, technically, he wasn’t. That boy was now dead, his corpse lying und—no, no, stop it. Now was not the time to think about that stuff. Oh god, what a life, he thought to himself for the millionth time this year, but no less tiredly for that.

How old was he, again? Oh, right, fifteen. He didn’t know much about law, but Morty was pretty sure that half the shit he’d been put through was very illegal, in this world and any other. The other half was even worse. The other half was illegal only because of his age.

That was the hardest part to understand, to explain.

If he told people that his grandpa had offered him alcohol strong enough to knock out a whole fraternity in one sip, no one would bat an eye. If he told his classmates (not that he talked that much to them) that he’d seen his grandpa snort what he could only conceive of as the equivalent of earth cocaine so pink and shiny and powdery its mere existence seemed impossible, they would whistle and pat him on the back, telling him how good he had it, having drugs so expensive and with effects so blissful at the reach of his hand.

But if he told them the rest, even just a tiny portion of what he’d done with Rick, they would stare at him, wondering whether he’d gone mad and delirious because the only other option was to believe it, and no one lucid enough would want to think of that as a reality, as a fact of daily life for Morty.

It’s not that he was being rap—no, no, that word was horrible in its own simplicity and reductivity. Things weren’t that simple, that easy to classify as _wrong_. If there was something Morty had learned since day one with Rick was that wrong was just a misconception. A blurry concept earth people had come up with to be at peace with their own condition.

Things weren’t that simple with Rick. Things would never be that simple ever again, not after having stepped through a green plasma-ish portal for the first time what seemed like one-century-long year ago.

Just because he was four—no, fifteen, he reminded himself, it didn’t mean he couldn’t choose for himself how to fuck up his own life. He’d seen stuff only comparable to what war veterans and dying junkies had seen in their entire lives, he’d seen that and _more_ , in only a year. That certainly had to count as something, right? Because he’d also seen things so beautiful and breathtaking he thought he could’ve died right there and then. That also had to count, didn’t it? Yes, yes, in planetary terms he might’ve still been a minor—pfff, he tried not to scoff at such a ridiculous concept, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t decide he’d had a boner for his own fucking grandfather—dear god, saying that word was becoming more and more difficult with each passing day. What did it mean anyway? Nothing, he hadn’t called Rick _grandpa_ in ages, not outside of their own fucked up sessions, anyway. Their relationship was defined now by something so much stronger, by something Morty could actually control and not by a stupid sanguine bond he had no power over, a bond that had been created years and years before he’d even been born, back when Rick met the woman who would give him a daughter, and whom would subsequently give him, _him_ , Morty.

He wasn’t getting any sleep any time soon, was he? Tonight, his mind was less merciful than ever.

It’s not like he was feeling sorry for himself, it’s not like he hadn’t enjoyed thoroughly each and every one of those moments. But that was the hardest part, realizing he liked it, loved it. He hated this, he felt like he was being forced to look at himself, to truly look at himself and see how fucked up he was, how helpless Morty was before his own messed-up state of mind. He hated it, this confrontation.

Once Morty finally got fed up with the train wreck of shit he had for a brain, he decided to get out of bed and go where he knew he could always find some sort of peace. It didn’t occur to him, as he was turning the doorknob and stepping out into the dark hallway, how ironic everything was: that the cure was also the malady itself, that the sole source of his distress lay right where he was heading.

*

*

*

Rick’s bedroom was a sanctuary of sorts, where all of Morty’s ugly desires dared not get in. Yes, it was just like a sanctuary of shame. He knew it, Rick, he was aware without even being told that Morty was too weak and too young to be able to spit on everything he’d been taught to hold sacred, to disrupt the most basic rules of morality his parents had brainwashed him with. He knew, Rick, that Morty was not yet fully _okay_ with what was going on between them, that his shaking and malleable principles needed still some re-wiring.

Morty knew it, too, thanks to Rick of course. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Rick knew how everything worked, from quantum physics and space travel to insignificant species’ laws and morals, like humanity’s. He just knew it, and he’d never kept quiet about it, especially not in front of Morty. That’s why he was so powerful, after all. His infinite knowledge, and his smug take on it.

Had he been more merciful and simple, Rick would have turned into a made-up god, one very weak. One who would’ve carved beings out of mud and dust and breathed them into life, all out of sheer loneliness. No, Rick was no stupid creator. Rick was a man-god of twisted ways. He killed without so much as a glimpse of guilt, drank like there was no screaming tomorrow and got off on destroying things and Morty couldn’t be any happier about it. Couldn’t be any more conflicted and uneasy about it all.

Morty scratched his head, wondering where all these thoughts were coming from. They certainly didn’t feel like his own. For a brief moment, he had the ridiculous suspicion that maybe Rick was using his brain and synaptic processes as a perfect testing subject.

For a brief moment, that idea didn’t seem so crazy. It was rather frighteningly plausible.

But the suspicion was gone as soon as Morty recognized it as something uncomfortable and did what he always did with those kinds of thoughts: he crossed it out as nonexistent.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to think about any of this nonsense once he opened the door to Rick’s room. It was empty.

Of course it was empty. Had Rick been in the house at all, there was only one place he could’ve been in at this time: Morty’s bedroom.

*

*

*

One year, four months and thirteen days. That’s how long it had been since his knees had not been shaking every damn second he was awake. That’s when Rick stomped on through the front door of his life and banged on his brain until Morty had no option but to let him live there, but that was never enough; nothing was ever enough for Rick and once he had eaten up the whole of Morty’s sanity, the boy had had to agree to compromise even more and have Rick rewire his muddy brain back into some sort of insanity that he could put up with.

And that’s how Morty started dancing.

 


End file.
